My Lady, the Sands, and I

So, whispering sea, she passed this way?
Did she hate your gold with her foot, O sands?
Did she spurn your sheen as she spurned today
My heart? Did she crush you hard, I say?
No more than she did by me, O sands.

Swept she on in her cold disdain,
She, a lady with royal grace?
Saw you that pity, nor joy nor pain,
Nor love told over and over again,
Could soften the look of her splendid face?

Aye, that was my lady; for only she
Doth wear her hair in a golden crown
Of thickest braid, right legally;
The rest of the wealth of it half to her knee,
In a shining torrent rippling down.

Slender her foot, but its print doth keep,
When many a coarser one is gone;
And fine is my lady's scorn, and deep,
Though under her calmness it lieth asleep,
It stingeth long after it is withdrawn.

Yester'en was she graciously pleased to be,
Heaping you full as her hands could hold?
Sifting and sifting you tenderly,
Did she let the love of the winds of the sea,
Be in her hair, oh! never so bold?

No less to me than she bent to you,
As counting us fairly alike, you see;
She dallied, and listened, and lingered too,
And suffered the touch of the falling dew,
On lips she but hardly denied to me.

And today she scorns us, my lady, my queen!
--She who indulgently through her hands,
Slipped and sifted us yestere'en,
Your offence? You but kissed her foot, I ween;
And mine?--I but loved her, O shining sands!